Saturday, October 27, 2007

A recipe for meekook aka Estonian honey cake

Here's my entry for the 10th installment of Waiter, there is something in my ... (WTISIM) foodblogging event, a brainchild of three fabulous British foodbloggers Johanna, Jeanne and Andrew. This month's edition is hosted by Andrew, who has asked us to send in our recipes for LAYERED CAKES.

I decided to try meekook or a layered honey cake that is available in most cake shops and is a popular birthday table option. It consists of six thin cake layers and six simple sweetened sour cream layers. Our layers were slightly thicker than we expected them to be, but the taste was exactly right.

Whisk eggs until pale and thick.
Heat honey and sugar in a large saucepan. When it's about to boil, remove from the heat and add the whisked eggs, stirring until combined. Add baking soda and stir again.
Add flour gradually, mixing until combined. Put aside to cool completely!
Divide the dough into six equal parts (it's easiest to do it by rolling it into a cylinder and then cutting into six pieces).
Take six sheets of baking/parchment paper, dust very slightly with flour.
On a slightly floured parchment paper, form each piece of dough into a ball and then roll out into a 24 cm circles.
Bake one dough circle at the time for 5 minutes in the middle of a 225 C oven until dark golden. Remove from the oven and let cool on the baking paper.

Layer five baked circles with the sour cream on a cake stand, covering also the top cake circle.
Crush the sixth cake circle in a food processor and sprinkle on the top layer of sour cream.
Place into the fridge for 6 hours or overnight.

28 comments:

Hi, I cant remember when i discovered your blog (even before its revamp) and while i have yet to make something from it, i look at it ever so often and wish i could just get into the kitchen and get down to it...very frustrating let me tell you, when you are stuck in a office, officially "working" ;)) However, the oppt may be round the corner. I have only recently ventured into savoury tarts and i would like to try your Salmon kulebyaka. However, i wonder if it's possible to use the pastry crust from your beetroot and potato crust (which i found unusual cos there's so little butter involved! Im cooking for pp who have to watch their diet) and wonder if i can substitute that in the salmon kulebyaka instead of pate feuiletee? Or even a normal quiche-like base?

Sorry, for hijacking this post on honey cake to ask you this...should i have gone to the older post to post this question? But your honey cake DOES look browned, golden, i can just imagine the mix of sweet and tart.. you're a most talented cook, keep up the good work!

amazing... i wante to make something which looks almost exactly the same (no honey involved, though) - the dobostorte out of my(your) kaffeehaus cookbook. simply ran out of time. we'll bake it together next time you come!

I swear to you all that this is the most delicious cake ever. I tasted it first in 1995 when I had just arrived to Estonia and so far nothing even gets close to it. No cake in Austria, no dessert from the best restaurants of the US, UK, France, Germany or elsewhere I have been to so far. Recommended, recommended. Thank you for posting the recipe.

Alanna – it keeps for a few days in the fridge – and the flavour is actually best on the second and third day. The cream is just sour cream, so it doesn’t go off so quickly. A good one, isn’t it? And yes, K. definitely is something. Something very good :)

K&S – yep, it’s quite easy!

Annemarie – thank you! Go ahead – and please let me know what you thought of it. PS You’ll find good-quality sour cream in the Polish shops (ask for smetana, we used 20% one). The Tesco sour cream is also fine, but Sainsbury’s was weird.

Chris – thank you!

Johanna – I’ve bookmarked the Dobos torte recipe in Kaffeehaus, too! And I’m off to Budapest next week, so I hope to be able to try some of the ‘real’ stuff :)

This cake was absolutely delicious! I decided to surprise my mother by making it (she's Estonian). The cake layers themselves were a bit difficult to roll out, but other than that, the rest of the preparation couldn't have been simpler.

I'm so glad I found your blog, and I will definitely be trying many more of your recipes :)

I'm a little confused about the recipe -- it says to whisk the eggs with the sugar, then it says to heat the honey and the sugar. Are there two different amounts of sugar in the list of cake ingredients (and one might be missing?) or does it mean to just heat only the honey?Thanks-

'katie' above said there was no fat in the cake layers... There is fat in the eggs!

I made an Estonian Honey cake and the recipe was between this and another. I chose the other and made a 15 layer cake. It has been requested to grace the table again. So if you've never tried such a cake... do!

Pille, this looks FANTASTIC and I want to try it but first I have a question for you. The success of honeycakes like this often depends on the honey used. Would you recommend something light (clover honey), medium (wildflower), dark (buckwheat), or extra-dark (chestnut)? Or would you recommend trying each of them in succession, and baking Meekook for the next few weeks, ha ha!

I made this cake for an Estonian friend as a surprise, and as it turned out, Meekok is her favourite cake! So there was a lot of pressure when she tried her first bite, (I was very nervous!) but she declared that it was even "better than perfect!" (she is a very honest person too!) It was such a beautiful, moist cake, and I loved the use of sour cream in between the layers. The recipe was easy to follow and I think it might now be my favourite cake too! The day after cooking it was even better. But there wasn't much left!

I just tried to make this and my dough was so sticky! I wasn't sure when my eggs were 'pale and thick' so perhaps that was the problem? I beat about 5 minutes, though they became more frothy than thick. I am baking the layers now, but there was no way to roll the dough- I just spread it as best I could. Any ideas on where I went wrong?

HiJust find your sight...it's great! I'm Looking for help! I promised my husband (1st generation Estonian American) I would bake an Estonian cake or pastry for an event at the Estonian House in New York. I saw your honey cake and thought I would try it but I will not be able to refrigerate before the event. (Wr are traveling and our hotel won't have a refrigerator) Is that ok? Is there another cake you'd suggest? Thanks!!!

Dear Sue, for some reason I only got a notification of this question now. It's probably too late to give advise about the cake, or is it not? This cake is best when kept cool before the serving, as there is sour cream in the cake. However, if it's a matter of a few hours, then a cool larder or the truck of your car will also work.